Work | Mobile Apps

Reimagining home loans
with Athena

Athena Home Loans

Creating a new platform for financial wellness

Experience Design
Brand & UI Design

Mobile Engineering
React Native

Realising a game changing vision to help Aussies pay their loans down faster

Athena is a fintech startup on a mission to shake up the mortgage market in Australia. With low fees and clever tech, their vision is to arm home owners with the tools they need to save time, money and stress.

Bilue was chosen as a partner to design and develop Athena's first mobile app. Their existing web portal was rudimentary and its functionality didn't live up to the challenger brand proposition.

The team wanted to offer so much more to fully-realise their vision. Athena joined-forces with Bilue’s team to create a mobile platform that delivered financial wellness and effortless self-service.

Athena’s vision is to give home owners the tools they need to save time, money and stress

Research

Bilue's first task was to unearth 'aha' moments to help us define the Athena experience on mobile. We did this through rapid ideation that allowed us to test and learn. Our experts conducted research, such as task flows analysis, opportunity mapping and a landscape review. We then ran workshops with Athena such as 'crazy eights' sketching to quickly generate a range of concepts. Within weeks, we created a series of wireframes and prototypes, ready for our first round of testing.

What we discovered

Our first tests focused on the home page, information architecture and customer 'jobs' such as checking loan balances. Here we wanted to understand which concepts the participants found most intuitive and valuable. We did this by conducting moderated sessions with real Athena customers. These tested different concepts, designs and navigation patterns through interviews and task observations. This is what we found:

• 81% of the customers we spoke to preferred a fixed bottom tab style navigation
• 79% of participants favoured seeing their loan details in a modal with options to drill down into finer segments
• 59% of the people we interviewed said having a visualisation of their loan balance would be "nice to have"

Challenges we addressed

The main challenge we faced was balancing the tension between creating a groundbreaking product and ensuring it was still intuitive and easy to use. At this point, we made some tough decisions to invest in features with the highest value, to ensure users could complete their primary 'jobs to be done' with ease. We did this through prioritisation workshops that struck the balance between customer goals and business capabilities.

We wanted to offer customers a convenient way of managing their loan, wherever they are with just a few clicks. Without having to go on their laptops or call customer support.

— MARTA, ENGINEERING LEAD AT ATHENA

Make Instant Payments

Bilue designed an efficient mobile app that allows users to get in and manage their loan fast. Thanks to biometrics, Athena's customers are straight in with their face or thumbprint. This allows them to access their funds on the go, when they need it most.

Using Australia's 'New Payments Platform', we gave customers the ability to send money in an instant. Instead of having to wait days, Athena's users can pay out to over 100 financial institutions in under a minute.

On top of this, we gave users tools to add, nickname and edit their Payees whenever they like. What's more, there's nothing customers need to do to set it up. Thanks to Bilue's engineers, it appears to happen like magic.

Customise Your Loan

Bilue researched and designed a brand new repayments tool for the Athena app. It empowers users to be the boss of their mortgage and customise their preferences on the move.

Customers can see their current loan repayments and get coaching tips on how to pay it down faster. Users then adjust their repayments frequency and repayment amounts to meet their needs. As they progress, users see how they are saving interest through their changes.

The tool also saves time, as customers don't have to call support each time they want to change settings. This helps Athena's team, as it allows them to focus on other support issues.

Refer A Mate For Rewards

Bilue also made it easier for customers to share the love. Athena's referral program offers a cash bonus to customers when they refer a mate who takes out a loan. The problem was, the referral code was buried down the bottom of an email they received years ago.

Through research and design, we took the offer and put a spotlight upon it in the app. Now users can whip out their mobile and share their code across a variety of messaging platforms. No more faffing around when you're chatting to a friend at a barbeque!

To make things clear, we included the promo rules to encourage repeat usage. For Athena, this is a clever way to get organic business leads through the power of mobile.

Bilue has shown tremendous responsibility and accountability while working with Athena to deliver the mobile app. They’ve been critical over the entire journey of getting to market.

— AMEYA, SOFTWARE MANAGER AT ATHENA